Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People PDF
Preview Best Practices: Motivating Employees: Bringing Out the Best in Your People
Motivating Employees BEST PRACTICES B O B Y P RINGING UT THE EST IN OUR EOPLE BARRY SILVERSTEIN Contents PREFACE 1 UNDERSTANDING MOTIVATION Motivation on the Job Motivation Is Management’s Role 2 ESSENTIAL SKILL I: BEING A MOTIVATIONAL MANAGER Believing in Others Communication Motivating Individuals Motivating Teams 3 ESSENTIAL SKILL II: DEALING WITH DE-MOTIVATION Hiring to Reduce De-motivation What’s De-motivating Your Staff? Difficult Situations 4 ESSENTIAL SKILL III: REWARDING MOTIVATED EMPLOYEES Recognition versus Rewards Barriers to Rewards Systems Setting Up a System Using Nonmaterial Rewards Using Material Rewards 5 ESSENTIAL SKILL IV: MOTIVATIONAL LEADERSHIP Leading During Change Leading During Good Times Leading During Difficult Times Other Challenges OFF AND RUNNING RECOMMENDED READING SEARCHABLE TERMS ABOUT THE AUTHOR CREDITS COPYRIGHT ABOUT THE PUBLISHER Preface How do you motivate people? How do you get them excited about doing a great job? How can you inspire them to work harder? How can you recognize signs of de-motivation? Or, if you move into a new job and inherit a de-motivated staff, what tactics can you use to turn individuals around? How do you fire someone who refuses to cooperate? How do you keep your staff motivated and moving forward if your company is undergoing major change? In this book, we distill the wisdom of some of the best minds in the field of management to tell you how to do a better job at motivating your people and creating an energized, motivated workplace that supports the goals of your company. The language is simple and the design colorful to make the information easy to grasp. Quizzes help you assess your knowledge of motivational issues. Case files show how companies have tackled tough motivation problems. Sidebars give you a big-picture look at motivational challenges and highlight innovative, out- of-the-box solutions worth considering. Quotes from business leaders will inspire you as you face your own challenges. Finally, in case you want to dig deeper into the motivational issues, we recommend some of the most important business books available. The authors of these books both influence and reflect today’s thinking about managing people, motivating them, and related issues. Understanding the ideas they cover will inspire you as a manager. Even if you don’t dip into these volumes, the knowledge you gain from studying the pages of this book will equip you to deal firmly, effectively, and insightfully with the motivation issues you face every day—to help you make a difference to your company and in the lives of the people who support you. THE EDITORS Understanding Motivation “The only way to get people to like working hard is to motivate them. Every individual in an organization is motivated by something different.” —Rick Pitino, NCAA basketball coach M ost people in business would agree that the best employees are motivated ones. Motivated employees are the individuals who take the initiative, who want to do good work, who move up the ranks, and who are generally the most likely to succeed. Self-Assessment Quiz ARE YOU A MOTIVATIONAL MANAGER? Read each of the following statements and indicate whether you agree or disagree. Then check your score at the end. 1. I think motivating employees should be the responsibility of management. • Agree • Disagree 2. I generally can tell when an employee lacks motivation. • Agree • Disagree 3. I am honest and open in sharing essential information with employees. • Agree • Disagree 4. I may be demanding, but employees know that they can count on me to support them. • Agree • Disagree 5. I encourage employees to take ownership of their jobs and feel as if they are part owners of my organization. • Agree • Disagree 6. I use positive reinforcement often with employees and present negative feedback in a constructive manner. • Agree • Disagree 8. I care about employees as people and want to help them succeed. • Agree • Disagree 9. I think it takes more than good pay to motivate employees. • Agree • Disagree 10. Employees would say that I make them feel good about working in my organization. • Agree • Disagree 11. Employees would say I inspire them to do their best. • Agree • Disagree Scoring Give yourself 1 point for every question you answered “Agree” and 0 points for every question you answered “Disagree.” Analysis 8–10You are an excellent motivational manager. 5–7 You could use some work on your motivational skills. 0–4 You have a lot more to learn if you want to motivate employees. $$ Employees who are motivated are loyal and dedicated and become ambassadors of good will for their companies. In fact, it’s widely accepted that companies with motivated employees have lower turnover and tend to outpace their competitors in sales and profits. The more motivated your workforce is, the higher your organization’s productivity will be. “Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.” —Peter Drucker, management guru and author (1909–2005) $$ Motivating employees, then, is recognizing that employees are essential to the company’s ability to succeed. It is about building a corporate culture of people who want to be exceptional at their jobs and who are proud of where they work. Motivating employees is not about giving people something they do not deserve or showering them with benefits and rewards so they will work longer hours or accept poor working conditions. Behind the Numbers DECLINING MOTIVATION In about 85 percent of companies, employees’ morale has been found to decline significantly after the first six months in a new job. It then continues to deteriorate for years. A 2006 study showed that fair salary and benefits, the opportunity to accomplish good work, and satisfying relationships with coworkers are vital. If just one of these factors is missing, employees are three times less enthusiastic than employees at a company where all three factors are present. Findings are based on surveys of about 1.2 million employees at 52 primarily Fortune 1000 companies from 2001 to 2004. SOURCE: “Stop Demotivating Your Employees!” by David Sirota et al., Harvard Management Update (January 2006). $$ Although it is important to keep motivated employees motivated, the larger challenge for managers is finding out what motivates the other employees. Motivation is a very personal thing. What motivates some employees won’t motivate others. Yet there are certain motivators with such wide appeal that most everyone responds positively. This book will look at many of these motivators. We’ll also discuss what it takes to be a motivational manager, how to keep employee motivation from falling, and why motivational leadership is essential. “Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.” —Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People $$ As you consider how to motivate your employees, a basic understanding of the psychology of motivation is helpful. The foundation of modern thinking about motivation is Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs,” introduced in 1943 and still used by psychologists, business managers, marketers, and others to understand what motivates people. Maslow theorized that after humans have met their basic physiological needs, they want to satisfy successively higher social and spiritual needs. Maslow identified four levels of needs above the most basic needs for food, sleep, and sex. Maslow’s hierarchy is often shown as a pyramid, with the basic needs at the base, and the need for self-actualization at the tip of the pyramid.
The list of books you might like
